the bedroom. I tightened my grip on her wrist and said, “Drop the candlestick, Molly. Now.”
She let out a sound full of anger and laced with a little pain, and the heavy candlestick dropped to the floor, making a dull thud as it hit the rug-covered concrete. The air around her was alive with power, buzzing against my skin like a thousand tiny sparks of static electricity in a dry winter. “He can’t talk to you like that,” Molly snarled.
“Think,” I told her, my voice hard but measured. “Remember the lessons. They’re just words, Molly. Look for the thought behind them. He set you up for this reaction. You’re allowing him to make you embarrass me.”
Molly opened her mouth on an angry retort, then forced her mouth closed and turned her face away from me. She remained rigidly tense, and after a fuming half minute, she said, her voice more calm, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I replied as gently as I could. “Be disciplined. You can’t afford to let them rattle you. Not ever.”
She took another deep breath, exhaled, and then I felt her begin to ease down, relaxing her mental grasp on the power she’d instinctively prepared. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, Harry.”
I let her go slowly. She began to rub at her right wrist with her other hand. I winced a little on her behalf. I thought I’d left bruises on her skin.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Take Mouse and grab the mail.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need—” she began. Then she stopped herself, shook her head, and looked at Mouse.
The big dog heaved himself up, walked over to the basket next to the door, grasped his leather lead in his jaws, and dragged it out. Then he looked up at Molly, his head cocked to one side, his tail wagging hopefully.
Molly let out a rueful little laugh and knelt down to hug the big dog. She clipped his lead onto his collar, and the two of them left.
I turned and eyed the candle. It had spilled hot wax onto a genuine Navajo rug on the floor, but it hadn’t set anything on fire. I bent down and picked up the candle, then started trying to clean up the spilled wax as best I could.
“Why?” I asked in a hard voice.
“It’s one way to take a measure of a man,” he said. “Looking at his students.”
“You didn’t look,” I said. “You needled her until she broke.”
“She’s a self-proclaimed warlock, Dresden,” he replied. “Guilty of one of the most hideous and self-destructive crimes a wizard can commit. Is there some reason she shouldn’t be tested?”
“What you did was cruel,” I said.
“Was it?” Morgan asked. “There are others she is going to meet, one day, who will be even less gracious. Are you preparing her to deal with those people?”
I glared at him.
His gaze never wavered. “You aren’t doing her any favors by going easy on her, Dresden,” he said, more quietly. “You aren’t preparing her for exams. She doesn’t receive a bad mark if she fails.”
I was quiet for a minute. Then I asked, “Did you learn shields as an apprentice?”
“Of course. One of my earliest lessons.”
“How did your master teach you?”
“She threw stones at me,” he said.
I grunted, without looking at him.
“Pain is an excellent motivator,” he said. “And it teaches one to control one’s emotions at the same time.” He tilted his head. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I told him. “She could have broken your head open, you know.”
He gave me that same unsettling smile. “You wouldn’t have let her.”
Molly came back into the apartment, carrying a handful of mail, including one of those stupid Circuit City fliers that they just won’t stop sending me. She shut the door, put the wards back up, and took Mouse’s lead off. The big dog went over to the kitchen and flopped down.
Molly put the mail on the coffee table, gave Morgan a level pensive look, and then nodded at him. “So . . . what’s he doing here, boss?”
I stared at Molly for a moment, and then at Morgan. “What do you think?” I asked him.
He shrugged a shoulder. “She already knows enough to implicate her. Besides, Dresden—if you go down with me, there’s no one left to take responsibility for her. Her sentence will not remain suspended.”
I ground my teeth together. Molly had made a couple of bad choices a few years back, and violated one of the Laws of Magic in doing so. The White Council takes